The most striking, and potentially the most dangerous, development during 1996 was the resurgence of tensions and armed conflicts in the Middle East that had been believed contained, though not solved. While these conflicts remained localized, there was always the danger that regional disputes of this kind could develop into full-scale international wars. In the United States the administration of Pres. George Bush was belatedly criticized for not having pursued the Persian Gulf War, against Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein, to the end. Hussein continued to challenge the terms of the armistice, particularly with regard to inspection and disarmament. He had support from nations--including Russia, Japan, and some European countries--that wanted to gain reentrance to the Iraqi market. Hussein also flaunted the U.S.-controlled no-fly zone established to protect Kurdish refugees. On two occasions U.S. forces bombed Iraqi military installations. These strikes were largely symbolic, however, and did not do significant harm or deter Hussein from further military action, as was demonstrated by Iraq’s intervention in the struggle between rival Kurdish groups when fighting in the Kurdistan region again flared up during the summer. With the help of Iraqi army units, forces of the Kurdistan Democratic Party took the offensive and seized Sulaymania, the second largest city of the area. In October units of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan), which were supported by Iran and, apparently, by Iranian troops, started a counteroffensive and retook Sulaymania. Fighting continued, but during September--following U.S. mediation--peace talks began.

There was the danger that Turkey, which had experienced a Kurdish insurrection in the eastern part of the country, would intervene on a massive scale. Thus, Kurdistan presented a prime example of how a minor regional conflict contained the seeds of a bigger conflict. While neither Turkey, Iran, nor Iraq had the desire to become too deeply involved in the struggle for Kurdistan, there was the danger that events would get out of hand.

Turkey, a member of NATO for decades, distanced itself from its traditional Western partners during the year and followed a pro-Islamic foreign policy under Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan. (See BIOGRAPHIES.) Erbakan’s attempts to establish closer ties with Islamic nations were, however, only partly successful.

The other major Middle Eastern conflict to resurface was that between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. The murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish nationalist fanatic in October 1995 was followed in February and March 1996 by a series of suicide bomb attacks carried out by members of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. This in turn contributed to the defeat of the Labor Party under Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres, and the victory of the right-wing Likud headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. (See BIOGRAPHIES.) The Likud coalition was opposed to the peace process as outlined in the Oslo agreements; negotiations with Syria came to a standstill, and no significant progress was achieved in the talks with the Palestinians beyond what had already been agreed upon by the previous government. Following the opening of a tunnel in the Old City of Jerusalem, there were bloody clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces. This caused a further deterioration in the relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Militant Islamism played a central role in other world conflicts. In the civil war in Afghanistan, the Taliban, a fundamentalist group supported by Pakistan, controlled more than half of the country, including the capital, Kabul, by the end of the year.

Islamism (and local nationalism) played an important role in the conflict with Chechnya that had bedeviled Russian politics for years. Dzhokhar Dudayev, the leader of the Chechens, was killed in fighting in April. (SeeOBITUARIES.) Later in the year Gen. Aleksandr Lebed (see BIOGRAPHIES), Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin’s special adviser on security affairs, worked out an armistice with the new Chechen leaders. But in October Lebed was purged by Yeltsin (or by aides acting on behalf of the ailing Russian leader), and the future of Chechnya was again uncertain.

Conflicts between nationalities persisted during the year, and the Balkans and the Middle East were turned into what they had once been--permanent zones of conflict. The bloodiest conflicts, however, surfaced in regions considered by most observers as backwaters of global politics, particularly in Africa (the war between the Hutu and the Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi and a conflict between Rwanda and Zaire).

Even the bones of contention between China and its neighbours were of little consequence in a wider perspective. A more aggressive Chinese policy brought about a confrontation with Taiwan when Beijing tried to prevent the Taiwanese elections from taking place. The conflict with Japan was about the ownership of Diaoyu Dai/Senkaku, a group of tiny unpopulated islands in the China Sea of which only a few geographers had been previously aware. Such were (and are) latent nationalist passions in this and many other parts of the world, however, that a greater conflagration could not be ruled out, however intrinsically unimportant the issue at stake.

Europe was preoccupied chiefly with internal economic and social problems, above all competitiveness, unemployment, and rising social costs. There was social unrest such as had not been witnessed for years, leading, in the case of France, for example, to mass strikes and demonstrations. Certain foreign political issues did, however, continue to occupy European policy makers. Among these was the slow movement toward greater economic integration following the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993. While opposition to a common currency became even more outspoken, the idea of achieving this goal by 2002 was not given up. At the same time, relations with the U.S. became more acrimonious in view of differences of opinion regarding armaments. By and large, the European countries were less concerned than the U.S. about the proliferation of the means of mass destruction. Nor was there full agreement about the future character of NATO. In June the foreign ministries of the NATO countries agreed in Berlin on the reform of the alliance and a closer relationship with the Western European Union (WEU); in practical terms this meant the return of France to NATO under conditions yet to be discussed in detail.

As in past years, it was next to impossible to point to a clear trend in world politics to either the left or the right. Thus, to give but two examples, the right-of-centre Italian government was defeated in April 1996 by a left-of-centre coalition, whereas in Spain the Socialist Worker’s Party, which had been in power for 14 years, lost in the general elections in March to the conservative Popular Party. In the April and May elections in India, the ruling Congress (I) Party was further weakened, and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party emerged as the strongest single party. Perhaps the most important elections were those in Russia in June and July, which Boris Yeltsin won by a fairly narrow victory over his neocommunist rival Gennady Zyuganov. (See BIOGRAPHIES.) During the past two years, Russia had grown less friendly toward the outside world, even though there were no open confrontations.

Another issue that preoccupied governments was the problem of international terrorism. While terrorist activities were not on a significantly greater scale in 1996, there was a growing awareness that with each year terrorists would have easier and wider access to weapons of mass destruction and that in the future terrorist attacks could have far more devastating effects than in the past. Walter Laqueur